Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: We're live.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay, we're live. Senate Education Committee on the afternoon of January 27. We set aside an hour, then at the beginning of the fourth week of the session, success on I set aside an hour here for us to have a discussion about where direction and what we want to where we're headed. We've as we all know not good or bad, whatever, we did not receive maps from the task force and which left us in a little bit of info as we start the session with a bill that says one thing, but the one thing didn't happen. And so we've been I've been trying to we've got the proposed, or at least a potential map from Secretary Saunders and been bringing in a lot of superintendents from around Vermont just given their views about the whole environment and we've heard very different takes on things from various superintendents. So now, you know, we need to figure out the direction we have Senator Rutland in Ways and Means Committee as something to, you know, it would be immediate. So I guess I just want to figure out if there's any kind of consensus on the committee about corrections and maps otherwise, and then figure out how we do this. There's one thing I don't want to do, I don't think any of us want to do, in fact, I know I just want to do, is go through this session and not get anything done and not have, I think, in my view, I think I've been saying, witnesses are trying to draw out about is the fact that they need to do something, get a handle on their rate of increase and school expenditures. Otherwise, we're going to have, know, buying down the rate the last several years. Looks like on some level we're going to do some of that again, but my prediction is that's the last time it's going to happen. And we're not well positioned to deal with that, got problems. So, I guess just go around a room and get people's sense. You don't have to have the final answer, just what you're thinking, like, what I'm looking for later, so let me start with you, Jeremy.

[Nader Hashim (Member)]: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I would like Yeah. I definitely don't have a final answer, but, you know, I mean, we're already at the January and about a month and a half until crossover. And, I think that we need to avoid spinning our wheels and getting lost in the weeds, specifically about maps. And I think there are other ways that we can go about this, and I think taking a deeper dive into what the task force actually did come up with made sense. Don't think that we have, I don't think it's feasible, nor do I think that we, as a committee, have the bandwidth to go above and beyond what the task force was able to do with members who are experts in their field, superintendents and so on. And yeah, I mean, they were tasked with coming up with masks, but I think that instead of saying, they didn't come up with masks, so now we have to go up with masks, I think we should be asking the question, okay, those folks didn't come up with masks specifically for us, why not? And taking whatever points that are there that led to them being unable to come up with masks. Taking those under consideration as we go into whatever the next step is. I I think that is the next reasonable place for us to go and plug. I mean, I feel like we can find ourselves spending hours, if not days and weeks, going over these specific boundary lines for places that some of us have never even visited or really know nothing about and coming up with something that isn't really what Vermont is your belief.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Question to Nader is that, obviously, Matt's, you're kind of, if you were in charge, what's our path forward? Referring to what What we should

[Nader Hashim (Member)]: be as a committee. If you were in charge,

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: this is what we're gonna have, because I gotta get a mindset.

[Nader Hashim (Member)]: Yeah, I think that what we have to do is look at what the redistricting task force came up with, and look specifically at, I feel like they've already presented this to some extent, but taking a deeper dive into what blocks did they encounter that caused them to steer away from essentially the mandate that they develop masks. You know, it's I feel like there are warnings there that we should heed as we move forward. I don't think that, you know, just because it's not, just because what they provided is not necessarily what was envisioned or put their, frankly, put in law if they didn't come up with those specific masks. Why? What did they encounter that caused them to say masks aren't feasible? I think they touched on it, but I think that we need to look at whatever, at the BOCES model that they're talking about while thinking about how the challenges that they encountered. You know, again, I don't have the final answer, but I feel like we could end up just in Groundhog's Day of going back every day, looking at maps. Just

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: what happened last year.

[Nader Hashim (Member)]: Yeah, like what happened last year, what we kind of sort of enjoyed the past couple of weeks. And I get it, it's good for us to once again visit it and kind of having that redundancy because, know, it's, yeah, it's like I'm not faulting the committee for having gone back to, you know, alright, are we sure we can't do maps? Because that, you know, visit redundancy, task force did their work, and, you know, we're of dotting our i's and crossing our t's. And also, you

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I would say on that score, exploring what we heard from superintendents on the CD2, that that was one of the things was to get a sense of where people are on this. Yeah. Right? I think so. So I think you're saying deeper dive in the past grocery report, they'll spit our rules on maps and specifically at post medical season one.

[Nader Hashim (Member)]: Yeah, yeah, specifically that and yeah, I think that's a good starting point and honestly I think that if that is the path we go, we got to start sooner rather than later because we're already at the January And I mean, I know you've got a good sense of timelines not trying to tell you what to do, but I still wanna find ourselves at the February and, you know, again, kinda scratching our heads wondering, one, where did the time go? And two, what do we do moving forward? That's those are my general thoughts that I'm feeling well. Well,

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: if we could go back to you?

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: No, may

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: have. Either way we want go.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Did you start with Nader? Well, I was

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: gonna start. We'll start on the Yeah, I'll

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: go last.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. Good. Go to David. Gonna I ask you

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: wanna hear what you have to say because I'm taking Valentin.

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Yeah, so I take the exercise here, and there's a whole bunch of different factors involved that are on the table with Act 73. One of them is the superintendent identified inefficiency of so many districts and so many duplicated staff offices. Okay? So so in in our region, I'll only speak for myself, we have a very natural, based on geography and existing facilities and existing students, we have the ability to take a variety of several districts and SUs, pull back, take a look at the entire region and the region, everything from Otter Valley to Killington to Mill River to Poldeny, Fair Haven, and have one or two leaders, superintendents, take a look at the future on how enhance education for the students, contain the costs, if there's any buildings which need to be repurposed, that's all part of the story. I'm encouraged that our superintendents recognize that opportunity, and I believe they see the logic came from them to begin with, and now I'd like to kind of have them exercise it. Very unfortunate that the Superintendent's Association didn't come with any kind of plan in regards to a regional perspective on these geographically similar or at least geographic footprint having, you know, common goils. So I think that was an opportunity best by the superintendent's association to help us in that regard. What are you

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: saying they didn't do?

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: They didn't? So, again, in my region, it's very the the the what the a district, a combined district, larger districts would look like. They take all of the schools in that region which I just outlined with a single for, know, at most two superintendents to take a look at that as a district and and start making the decisions about how to positively affect the academic programs for the kids, take a look at facilities, where best to use facilities, what programs would better serve the students. So the missed opportunity is that they could have come to us formally in in testimony last week and and said the same thing. But so anyway, I I I just see it as that as an opportunity missed. I I think the BOCES districts are encouraging, very encouraging that the the rechecking task force validated that as a as a good concept and I agree with them that we we as a committee created the BOCES couple years ago. So, we saw the the the value of it. Now, the three district task force saw the value of it. That they have five districts or seven districts, one or the other. But while it's incurred while those these districts, those the maps they provided are encouraging from a business perspective. I think they intentionally avoided the conversation about why a leadership mandate from those five districts was also as compelling as the business case. And I think that, personally I think that if you see the logic of the business side of BOCES being beneficial for the state's schools, I think the leadership is equally applicable to the Advisor's District. Again, I see that as a missed opportunity. It's important that we do something to contain costs, whether it's a cap in the interim, but there needs to be a cost cap. And that's a tough proposition simply because, well, one, it positively affects the property tax situation, but it negatively affects the, potentially, the effect on the schools because it's it's an artificial cap. It doesn't unless there's a way to to figure out how to make it more equitable across the various districts that we have. Anyway, we have to do something about cost containment. So one of the levers to pull was to have a much more mature conversation about the regions and how students can be combined into a much more enhanced education framework, being CTEs, schools, but anyway, several opportunities missed. I agree with Senator Hashim that we've only got a couple weeks to play this out and we do crossover. I would submit that to see where the two committees are in house and senate is to start having some conversations about where they are and what they want to achieve and see if there's commonality amongst their committee and our committee. Potentially request a push through crossover. Interesting. We can continue this kind of leverage of having two committees saying essentially the same thing. And and go from there. But if yeah. It's a mouthful of observations. K. I wanna go back a year and five weeks ago when we started this whole process. You know, we we agreed that we're gonna take the first two weeks and work on buying down the property tax rate, the education property of that. And then we're gonna come up with a plan based on AOE and the governor's ideas. We said we took testimony for the whole session. And finally, we said, you know, while we were doing that, the house committee, in my my view, came up with a plan. They gave us their plan. We we refined it so it was something that we could live with. And then it went to the finance, and everything got changed. I see our charge as come up with a plan. I think the first thing we have to do is we have to come up with boundaries of this this state education transformation plan. I don't care if you start out with one one district or 52 districts as I heard last week from the from our principal association. But we need to have boundaries made. We are not the experts to do that, I think. I don't think. But we need something to start the process because then we've got, governance, we have education quality standards that that is the primary focus of this whole process. We I'm not I'm not personally qualified to make a decision. That's where AOE could be. So we got a plan. We have to come up with a plan has to have parallel planning going on as we go through it. You know, if it's gonna be government operations that or the secretary of state that comes up with the awards for for the school boards or board of authorities that we're talking about. But I'm looking to the two chairs, chair Conlin and and chair Bongartz, to come up with where we're gonna go from here because I think we've been wasting time. So I really think that, you know, we we need to roll CTE into this because that is something that was really the original plan the governor had from my view was that it was it was founded in the base in in CTE. You need that type of additional training. So so I'm I'm in favor you know, I I think in two weeks, this group right here from the lock the door and stop taking testimony, we could come up to the plan and put it out. Those people shouldn't pull holes because they're going to. No matter what we come up with a plan, there's no cookie cutter solution to the problem, and that we need to let people start throwing their phone horns. And then we from there we go. So that's all I got to say. I want I think that we really need some leadership in this, and I expect we should be working in tandem with the policy education committee rather than working in two parallel planes like we did last year. You know, we should have joint, even if it's on Zoom and our own committee rooms in the afternoon when we're when we're in session for the standard education event.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: What do you want the outcome to be of joint meetings with education?

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: I I What plan? A plan? So, their legal order, see what the difference is. Right. I mean, that's what I do- But when it goes to

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: the House and the Senate, we're in unison that-

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: When what goes to the House of Senate? What plan?

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: The final bill. Further education transformation part. Yeah. So the bill's gonna come out of one chamber or the other. But to have that coordination ahead of time, to to get a majority at least the committee's finding finding synergy could be helpful. Sorry, our job is to is to do education policy. Right? We we can't do it well. We can, but we we still have to do it with the house education committee. And then everybody else has to get on board. You know, we really have to tell AOE what they're gonna do.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I agree with you later. Thank you.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Senator Feffernan.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Yeah, I'm ready to get NMC at the end.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: No, he went first.

[Nader Hashim (Member)]: Can I respond a little bit to Sure? I hear where you're coming from. I think, though, that to some extent, we have had proposals made. Like these big maps that we've gotten. We've that from AOE, and to some extent, we have had holes put in them by the Versus, we'll call them. I think that, you know, going back to some of my earlier thoughts on this from the last joint hearing we had, you know, it's challenging, if not impossible almost, for me or any of us to really make these boundaries about towns that we've never even visited. You know, I mean, can't even, I have been to the Northeast Kingdom a couple of times, but, you know, I can't in good conscience say, all right, I know that this town over here and this town over here and, you know, all these other towns, that'll make a good SU

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: or a That's what we need the superintendents to participate in that. We're not qualified to make that decision. I'm not in favor of the state forcing who wants to merge. I think that once the starting of all this process to play out, it's going be obvious to everybody once we get to the district boundaries now what schools have to merge. And I think it's obvious to them right now. They know where all bodies are there.

[Nader Hashim (Member)]: I mean that. Yeah.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I mean Did you see that map represented here?

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: I I I don't care which map we did. Take the one that DOV came up with.

[Nader Hashim (Member)]: My position is that a superintendent in a region, if we create some sort of incentive structure, may be more inclined to create these new boundaries voluntarily on their own. I do think, not trying to sound like a libertarian on this, but I think more government be put into this.

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Friday, the superintendent's association said they're not gonna do that.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I don't

[Nader Hashim (Member)]: think I think the more government that we introduce into this specifically, like, a higher up government as opposed to the local government, the SUs, the super superintendents. I feel like the more we introduce into that, the less things will make sense. And and I think that if there is some sort of incentive structure for school boards and superintendents to seriously contemplate merging, if it is conducive to a quality, good education for the students and makes sense geographically, then I think that could be a reasonable approach, but, you know, whatever that incentive structure is, I don't quite know. I agree. That is what I, like, if that's something we're going to explore, that's, that's

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: So try to say one more thing. So, you know, one of the dynamics that we have to get out in front of is the fact that our student population declines every year. Somehow we gotta this plan has to get out in front of that. And we're at 80,000 supposed, student population now. By the time this four year process unfolds, now three years, we're probably gonna have 70,000.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So you wanna plan for us to shrink instead of treating that as an economic and demographic problem?

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: It is. Well, it isn't. No.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I mean, because

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: So is it invasive?

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Because when a community grows, they need the capacity in that school. Right? That happened with high

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Sure. The other the other thing is that we know that once we have a world class education system in the state of Vermont, people are gonna Well, we're gonna have it better with this process.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Not with the sanctions here. I think we will.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So let's let's make sure I'm because I Yeah.

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: I just wanted to comment on the to incentivize superintendents to come up to provide input. I'm a little leery about that because the incentive is the improvement in the student programs academics that's that's the whole goal that's that's goal number one. Goal number two is you know bring down or plan me out property taxes, etcetera. So I'm a little disappointed that anybody needs an incentive to do the right thing. So I think if he really thought we needed an incentive, okay, we've got school construction program, okay, to maybe throw a carrot at, okay, we have to combine schools, this school gets renovation, the school is off the renovation list because the school that gets the renovations is the larger regional school or whatever the right term is. But I I don't, I've do, never operated in a system where you needed to be incentivized to do the right thing. So I'm a little disappointed with that, but I understand the concept. And you have tools at our disposal to do that, I believe, If we all agree on.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: That must be good sign. Okay. Okay.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Toby, where do want me to go first?

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: I wanna hear what you have to say. Did Wanda sit around? So, who you? Alright. We're gonna go around. She showed up late. She did not go ahead

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: and leave her. So,

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Mapping, I've totally to the conclusion that, for whatever reason, if we even say the Democrats, Republicans, it definitely doesn't want to happen on the side. And our governor has said, Hey, we need this. As a committee, we need to decide if we're gonna follow it or not. If we sway our decision to go against what our government, we gotta go to the governor and say, We're going against this, are you gonna accept this? If he's not, then we're spinning our wheels again. And just, as being just a second year person here, I can't stand it, it drives me nuts. So we need the governor to buy in. We heard from the SUs and SDs, and we had some of the SUs going, SUs are the only way to run it, and then we had SDs, SDs are the only way to run it. So that also, you know, it's like, I love getting input from our experts, but at the end of the day, our experts, we're gonna have to take what they give us and this body and the other body are gonna have to decide if it lies on our shoulders. And we can get as much advice from them, but at the end of the day, this committee, Senate and the House are gonna make a decision and it's the best informed decisions that this committee can give to our fellow senators and representatives. Major takeaway I got when we went to the schools is we're all looking for direction. The SU said it, the SD said it, you give us direction, we're gonna follow them. So let's give them directions. It's not. Know now, it's not gonna be perfect. But we gotta do something better than we're doing this, doing now, and we've been doing nothing. And that's, you know, for somebody who's used to getting stuff done, it drives me nuts. I believe what I see coming down the pike is that we're gonna strike almost all of Act 73 and rewrite it again from what we've heard. And if we're gonna do that, we gotta be prepared, again, with the governor to talk so that we get on the same page to get something going. Your new schools, there's no money. So we can talk about it. You know, when you said redistricting for I'm more centralized high all for that, but we don't have the money right now. So we gotta work with what we have presently to get to where we wanna be probably five, ten years down the line. So we gotta keep that in mind. Definitely doing maybe bigger high school areas, but knowing, hey, if we, I'll take Addison. If we get rid of Middlebury, pretends, and it's not even put them in a Haven like we had discussed, what are we doing within buildings that we know we can sell them off and help build So our new I'm for that. You know, the task force, if they were rated like a high school child or a student, they would've gotten that because I told you to do the report on George Washington, and you brought me a report back on Benjamin Franklin. It's like, we just didn't wanna go that route, we went this route. That is the truth of the matter. Their findings were great, but the truth of the matter, they did not do what they were tasked. So we're dealing with that now. And last, my pitch, is I see one school system. I don't wanna conquer the district. Wanna see one That school way, when people need to consolidate, the legalese will be gone. We're all under one school system, keeping the schools as individually as possible, rather than having school boards that might run two or three schools that they don't have as much knowledge as the people that might wanna be on a board adviser of a single school. And then, whatever we do from that, of course, it's all governance, wouldn't be in our house. But I'm probably gonna unveil something in the next week to see if anybody has an appetite for it. If they don't, gonna drop it in the basket and walk away. But I'm at least gonna give you an option that I've been looking at, and I feel, but I honestly believe that Act 73, we're gonna, remember, we're too total rewrite again. They just don't see that they're gonna fall in, call the requirements we put into that. And there's some, know, like school choice, I think, is huge, what we heard. Parents want school choice. There again, if we take away all the boundaries, 85% of all that most 85% of all students will go to a public school. So is that enough? Can we run the numbers to make sure that's enough to support our local school system? Or do we keep it mandatory in place of not being able to have choice of other education options, which takes away from our children, and that's what it's really about, getting our children educated to the best of their ability, not necessarily always going to the public school, but what might work best for them. So, that's my statement.

[Nader Hashim (Member)]: Just a quick response. Think one important thing, that I try keeping not just here but everywhere in life as you know. If you got a perspective but then you're introduced to new evidence and new information that shows you that your your initial perspective might have some flaws or there might be some issues. You know, it's not, in my opinion, a failure to take a step back and say, alright, maybe that initial perspective isn't actually going to work the way that I thought it would be, so why And what can I do differently? What's the contingency plan? Because my initial plan didn't work. And I think And

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: is that toward what the task force is doing? Is that what I've taken

[Nader Hashim (Member)]: I think it's us Or us. But also the task force. I mean, I was going through the reports from the task force and also some of the research, at least the research that's publicly available, and I didn't spend the same amount of time as they did, obviously, but I could see where they're coming from. It, you know, had they also done this other hypothetical, gone down this other hypothetical where they compiled all this research and said, hey, here is a map that changes our research and the expert testimony we've done. Here is a map that actually could be helpful, that will get to the heart of Act 73 that we're trying to accomplish. That is likely what I would be leaning to support. But again, I think it comes back to, they were given this task, they weren't able to complete what we hoped they would complete, so we first have to ask why did they do that, what warnings from that can we take into consideration as we develop some sort of alternative pathway. Yeah.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So to that, everybody wants to be data driven, which is very important, which I agree with. A wise decision on them would have been to draw, use the secretary's first matter, run the numbers on that, bring it back and say, this is why we've ran the numbers, this is why it's not gonna work. And then Which numbers? Whatever they decided for the map, you say, this is why, here's the map that we tried and it's not working. Maybe it did too. And then said, now I'm showing you, here's the evidence that shows redistricting does not work. All right? And then, and here is our recommendations. That to me would have been showing a better attempt. Again, I'm happy with their findings, but their tasks that they were, you didn't give me evidence that, well, we tried it and it just wouldn't work. And that's not evidence based that you, I said I tried, it didn't work. Where's the evidence you did it? I ran this map, here's what happened, here's why proposal, what they're giving us is a better proposal. It's a lot more palatable to somebody that's like, I asked you to do this, well, we just decided this was better, but I asked you to do this, why, why didn't, because we didn't think, or I just don't know why it wasn't right first. And we're past this now. That's just my opinion. They did a good job and we're gonna work with that, but if that's what we're gonna do, let's just do it and get that we're all on the same page. No maps, we're gonna try to work with what we got. How's the governor feel? Is that gonna work? And if it's not, then we're gonna be stuck here. So, Ed lies on Seth's shoulders and Peter's shoulders to get this wagon headed in the direction.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I said David's gay aunt, but

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Oh, sorry.

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Yeah. I I just wanna respond to one of the Senator Hashim and Mohammed said the child support didn't provide an outcome. In fact, I was encouraged, very, very encouraged that they provided the BOCES map. I see a lot of validity in the BOCES map. I mean, I get it. I agree. Okay? I agree. But that's a business, that's the business side of the house. It's the leadership of of the larger districts which I believe can also be applied to the BOCES I'll leave it at that. I think I said it earlier. I was very, very encouraged to see them. So,

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I'd like to step back to just a thought exercise. If we think about how Vermont is a state that doesn't even have county government

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Right. Right?

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So we our municipal taxes have been held pretty constant and steady because they've always felt overwhelmed by the education property tax. So so there's that. But if you've ever sat in government operations and we've talked about dispatch, we've talked about emergency services, we've talked about Essex Town and Essex Junction being one community. And after about a hundred years, we created a whole new city of Essex Junction. It concerns me that we are not having this conversation about our education system with any foundation of recognizing they are responsible for every child's life. They are responsible for every child's transportation. They are responsible for every child's mental health.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Who's this?

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: The school districts.

[Nader Hashim (Member)]: Not

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: not every child, but the majority. Because some people homeschool, some people practice working.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I think we should talk about homeschooling. You know what? I'm gonna add that to my list because I am very concerned that somewhere in the pandemic, we lost track of any requirements for homeschooling. So that's on my list now. So then we are asking school districts who are not only responsible for those things whether or not we're in a pandemic, they're responsible for the learning outcomes and the graduation of these kids. And they face, I would argue, very at face value, they face a very hostile federal government that has gutted the National Department of Education. And I would argue that right now they are facing hostile agency of education at the top. And if we were gonna start our list anywhere, then what I would say is that every time we ask the agency of education for a proposal or a plan or ask them for partnership in setting a direction, the pattern has been that they do not have the groundswell of the field behind them in what they propose. They have probably spent over $1,000,000 now on APA consulting. It was $823,000 as of July, July, 2025. So if they have spent over $1,000,000 on consulting proposals on transformation and all the things people have wanted to see, that we have rejected and that experts have rejected as being not evidence based and not really grounded in the research, then I'm I'm very concerned that we are asking everyone else for accountability and to jump through hoops and create 650 square mile districts. And we are not talking about what is being spent at the agency of education. I see it on our on our agenda. And if it is a PowerPoint, I am probably not going to be accepting that because I'd like to see a line item budget and appropriations to be investigating their use of funds.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So you said there's a lot of unhappy Can you bring us evidence of have people come forward and say we're really not happy, because one thing is saying it, and I'm not disagreeing with either, please don't think that. But it is having, as you said, evident that here is an onslaught of people that, superintendents, principals, everybody they deal with before saying

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So I guess what you're saying is how does our committee achieve accountability for the agency of education? How do we know if they're doing a good job?

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: They're rating them. Exactly.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: And Right. And Let's do that.

[Nader Hashim (Member)]: Let's do that.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: I agree. But

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: They were not gonna get the answer from them Yeah. About how they're doing. I'm I'm not done.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: But Go. Go. You finish.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Okay. I think the most important thing we did in Act 73 is the foundation formula. And I'm curious if everybody stands by the foundation formula.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. That's what I'm my answer is nuanced.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Okay. Every almost every other state in the country has a foundation formula to fully fund it or not. They have districts of varying sizes. You two weren't here on Friday when I wanted to try and finally put to rest this question of what is the appropriate district size. A quick search will demonstrate that 70% of districts in The United States are between 3,500 students. The average district size in the country is 5,000. That is brought way up by districts of 50,000, 60,000, etcetera. Are those good districts? I don't you know, I was in a a school district, you know, Los Angeles Unified has more students than the entire state of Vermont. New York public schools, very different story. People are mentally flexible about their sense of community when it comes to do they live in a city? Do they live in a rural place? Do they live in the suburbs? But we can't ask schools to be physically flexible across hundreds and hundreds of square miles. We don't ask that of of municipal government. And if we did, we'd recognize that it probably costs more to achieve that. Hence, we haven't fully had the conversation about county government. So that all said, I have said to my constituents, and I have been saying for the last two years, you can have a local vote on every school budget or you can have tax certainty. You cannot have both. The question in my mind is, is it a good practice for people are you leaving because of something I'm saying?

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: No. No. Not at all.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Oh, okay. No.

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: I I put people's testimony in

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Oh, okay.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: The box. Yeah. Here we go. He's upset. And I will watch

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: I will watch the portion that I missed.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Oh, great. So we somehow ended up with the assumption that the foundation formula simply would not work unless we had massive school district. We have not taken any time to get outside of the state of Vermont and question that assumption. And we have a secretary of education who often will not let the experts in her own agency testify to the the wide range of participation they have in national conversations around educational quality, etcetera. You want a grade or you want to know how I came to feel this way. I I think you were here when I had a heated exchange with the secretary about career technical education. That is the absolute top of my list this year above housing even. Why? Because if we are going to say based on any metric that we need to work on our education system, We need to look at the fact that forty percent of Vermont students go on to two or four year degrees. And we don't really have a good handle on what the other 60% are doing or how they're faring. And we had the secretary come in after many of us, including her own team and including the Department of Labor, had spent week after week, month after month, coming up with a shared set of principles, coming up with more of a shared understanding of what's happening around the state, meeting around the state. And she didn't even propose what APA Consulting had proposed last year, which is what they paid the original $200,000 for from APA Consulting. She came in with a completely new proposal that the CTE directors had to come sit and listen to to hear exactly what she was going to propose.

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: And she might dispute the project.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: We have that conversation on the record, and the CTE directors might dispute as well. And and I asked her when the last time she talked to the CTE directors was. So I don't think we can have a conversation with our incredibly besieged school districts. Right? My school district has been put has put a had a target put on it by no less than the president of The United States. Is that funny?

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: So you bring politics into this process. That's a problem with Let's just focus on the what we need to do, which is to come up with a plan and then let let it unfold.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: That affects the educational quality of my school district, the largest school district in the state. We need

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: we need for each one of us to come up with a plan and give courses of action to the chair. So So how do we go forward?

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So I've spoken my piece about the foundation formula, was the only real valuable piece of Act 73 and the one that I defended in my constituents because taking a vote on your school budget and spending different amounts per pupil is political. It's a political decision that our communities make right now about how much money each of their children get. And I don't think that's right. Beyond that, I think we have many, many, many, many conversations, many of which I've asked the chair if we could have full hearings about, on how to actually improve the cost of our education system and the quality of our education system. CTE, special education, civil rights, literacy, regional high schools and facilities, the cost drivers of health care housing, and what we could potentially do with a $125,000,000 instead of buy down the property tax if we were investing that in the brand list of our state. How we achieve equity across districts without saying simply merge. What the right size for a district is based on actual evidence and everyone reading the same research material. What is going to happen with the $4,000,000 that was set aside for the agency of education for transformation that could go to the districts to actually improve their schools and have merger conversations in places like Keenan where they know exactly what they would do, but they need technical assistance. Pre k access, transportation, homeschooling. I've added to the list. I could go on if you gave me more time to think about it. There are a lot of things we could do to improve kids' lives right now, and none of them have to do with artificially drawing maps every day in this

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So everybody else has spoken. Just say what I'm thinking here. I wanted to take the time, we did the five visits before the session started. Think that was really important for us to do that. We have some here to see and hear schools. I think I came away with a lot of powerful impressions from that. I think we all did. And then you know we we were left. Like I said at the beginning we're better for worse. The the legislation called for A, A didn't happen and so we're now trying to figure out the path forward. And I'm thinking about this through the lens of I want very much to focus on education quality and I try to make that the theme for our visits, the schools was how do we achieve, how do we provide excellent educational opportunities for every Vermont child? That's the right question. And at the same time, we have a financial crisis and where Vermonters cannot pay the property tax bills. And the only way that we've been able to make it possible for them to do so has been to buy down the rate for the last few years and I think that's over. We'll probably get to some extent this year but I think it's over. So we have a major problem facing us this year, next year, etcetera on funding and also simultaneously trying to achieve the highest level of educational opportunity for kids. But then we heard from, I think it was been really, my own view is it's been really valuable for us to hear from the superintendents because I wanted to, one thing I was wondering about is whether something would gel out of that, something would become obvious, something would, and there of course, I if the right term is divided, but there's a lot of different views within that community. I had superintendents in, well, I had never spoken to. I didn't know them just because we're pulling some superintendents and see what they have to say in the field. And so we have, you know, really impressed by the by the number of times we've heard 2,000, as a as a number that probably makes some sense, which is different than what's in the legislation as it currently exists. I think we need to look at what we've had. A lot of disagreement between even the superintendents and rural schools community alliance and others about SDs were success views. My own view is whatever we put together districts can, my view is they can decide which way they want to do it. I'm not really interested in imposing it on anybody, one or the other. And so we can and I was really impressed with a couple of people that made the case that if we get districts that are too large really that you have to build in middle management and you lose this sort of nimbleness and what the being in touch with superintendents. So we talked about districts that are a size that are manageable without legal management. So I was impressed by that. And so I think we have Senator Rutland's bill trying to do something about the immediate and if his, you know, he's the first one to say it's a bit of a blunt instrument and some, and maybe there's a way through the finance work of the finance committee to fill in some new ones and he knows that needs to happen. But I think that I'm I'm deeply concerned about what happens if we don't do something to control the rate of increase in school budgets. By the way, I say that, even with the belief that the money we're spending is probably well spent in most instances I don't know, but I assume that it is. And you know, I've done some of the testimony compelling, but we still have to deal with the fact that we've got a real issue with the property taxes. It's going to fight us a big time if

[Terry Williams (Clerk)]: we don't deal with it.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And so I don't have a problem if we want to keep looking at maps some and keep that discussion alive but I also think we need to be thinking about if we have the immediate perhaps with the zero or two of spending power. I think we need to be thinking about medium and long term at the same time but not not necessarily the same thing. So I'm thinking about what we can do that will bring down to rate of increase to a level that Lamontis can afford but do it in a way that provides opportunity and help the districts to make the decisions they need to make. And I have I've got a lot of things in mind I've actually been working on, obviously I've been working on things. And by the way, I also think we need to figure out a way to get some money into school construction and we need to then figure out the priority for where those dollars go for school construction and I'm thinking about how to do that and I have something that I'll be bringing to the community so that'll at least get a real discussion started about what I'm feeling perhaps as the middle chapter in our effort to get into the longer term.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So First of all, I hope CTE is on your list. I would like to have a hearing soon.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Oh, we can have yeah. I thought we were doing the joint hearing on CTE.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I hope so, but I think Alison was a little thrown that it's coming to your committee, and I was trying to see if you all are scheduled again.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: No. I

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Now that we're moving on. Okay. Okay. So I hope I By the

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: way, of course, agree with the importance of CTE.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Okay.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: But I think the whole committee's been definitely sold on the importance of CTE.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Okay. So I'd like the opportunity to present that because I think we got way late with the first presentation on CT. I I think if if we're saying we believe in the foundation formula and we believe in act 73 to put an artificial district cap

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Oh, I'm not

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: on schools is an edge if there's education policy that's affected by that, If we were the ones who said the foundation formula is ours to determine as a committee, right, that we led on the foundation formula, we left some pieces of the tax rate completely alone for finance, But an artificial cap on a district versus a per pupil spending amount, if we're really moving toward a foundation formula, it would, in my view, be a dislocation of the middle state to do a cap.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I I I didn't mean to suggest that.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Okay. I just I'm not gonna let finance just sort of have that debate until we're left with what's at the end, because it's education policy, and if we care about the foundation formula, I think we could do harm to the foundation formula like I was saying. We want you to do this, but in the meantime, we're still gonna short you.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: But that's not what I was suggesting. Okay. I'm not even remotely thinking that, like

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Okay. I don't think the cap is a good idea.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah. I'm not remotely thinking that way. I was only saying, I was just giving some observations.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Right. Right.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: That I was depressed by the number of times we've heard that. Right. And I'm not saying I was not being to suggest that's correct.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I think principally, what I had wanted to say before, before jumping into my list of things I hope we get to, is that people are paying a lot of attention to what we're saying. And we not only do we need to be careful about how we're talking about our school districts. Right? I mean, they're number they just were named number one in special education. Many of them are doing their best, especially climbing back out of a pandemic environment where they put everything aside to make sure kids were eating and and have had good mental health support. But every time we say we might do this or we might do that, they have to think existentially. And we might have one district. We might have 10. It doesn't matter. That's just not fair. We we don't do that to other units of government. And I just hope we stop doing that here.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And what what what stop doing what exactly?

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Throwing out that it doesn't matter if we have one district, two districts, 14 districts, what the foundation formula is if we have a cap. This is existential for our school districts in a time where they are already under existential threat.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I I just have a discussion here. I think it is really I think what we gained, especially out of going out of the building, like we did during those five visits was to get I I already knew it intellectually, but it was driven more emotionally for me, the effort that schools are making for kids. And I knew it, like I said, but it was it was driven home, listening to those teachers in Canaan talk about what they're all doing to try to provide those kids with a real high school experience, having them do two after school clubs, not just one. And and what the schools are having to do to going into the whole family almost to try to try to give prepare kids for being able to learn through through school to school meals, mental health counseling, and all the things that they're doing for kids living in difficult circumstances. And I just think it's powerful and so I think it's actually thank you for reminding us. We should almost always start any discussion with that acknowledgement because I feel it deeply. I think everybody does and I am deeply one teach others and administer this to be my fault. And so when I talk about you need to get a handle on the rate of increase, by the way, it's not a criticism. And I want to make it happen for me. It's just reality in my fear of what happens if we don't. And so

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: The superintendents gave us a list of their cost drivers and the factors they don't control as well as the difficulty they have in having conversations about finding efficiencies. They act finding efficiencies, whether it's new districts or sharing resources. They're not getting help. And now we're saying, well, they came and they didn't produce any unified information. I just really don't agree with that.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: That's a fair point. There some commonalities. My point in the beginning was that there was also a lot of divergence and that's fine.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: It's like getting two fifty two town managers to

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: come in and

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: tell you what to do.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I wanted us to hear that and get a sense of the depth and breadth of their understanding of the landscape and I found it really helpful. That that being said, by the way, we have to start our other section in a couple of minutes here and you have to go from there, right? Yeah. So, I'm working on something, I don't want to sort of like talk about it quite yet or immediately know what it is, but trying to thread this needle and get us to something that will hopefully accomplish what we're trying to get on. And I do think, you know, if it's if people don't want to shut the door on vaps because of the at the house is available and we can keep doing some thinking about vamps and how to get there, what that might look like, then but I also take your caution, by the way, on that. But I don't but I'm not I don't wanna say we're not it's not for me to say anything whether we are or aren't. I'm just my point is that we're not closing any doors, but we're recognizing the one thing I don't want to do is end this session and accomplish nothing. I don't want to make sure we've accomplished what we need to accomplish for taxpayers and for the kids in in Vermont. And so we have to just figure out, but I think we're all getting, we're going down 2001, so we might be doing that for a while, but we have to keep our eye on getting at least that a part done. So I think, definitely, they're coming into town. You wanna take a short break? Yeah. Sure. Break.